“A Secret History of Strawberries” by Preston Pouteaux for Ekstasis Magazine invites us to consider the strawberry as an enchanted invitation into the story of God’s love for us, and the places we find ourselves. Read more here.

Alive Upon Arrival is an article in “New Life Rising” written by Preston Pouteaux. This is a project of Christianity Today and explores stories of Lent and Easter. Some things decay, but that’s not the whole story. Read the whole piece here.

“Shalom: Attending to Peace” was a creative little project we made for our community in 2022. During times of anxiety in our city and communities, we hoped to share enduring words of peace to help carry us through. You can download the PDF of the booklet here if you’d like.

Preston Pouteaux’s article, “The Bursting Book of God” was featured in Ekstasis Magazine. You can read the whole article here and reflect on what it means to encounter God in the ordinary places of our ancient and storied neighbourhood.

I hiked up a dusty path leading to the ancient city of Jericho and stepped to the edge of a famous archeological wonder: Kathleen Kenyon’s trench. It is like a massive cake-slice into the ruins of the oldest city in the world. As a student the text-book images teased my imagination, there hunched under the buzzing fluorescent lights of my college library. But here, under the baking desert sun, I stood in awe looking down at the real thing. Layers of civilization, destruction, and time, were laid bare by Kenyon’s big dig down into this ancient mound. I was travelling with a professor who knew the place well, and she leaned over and asked if I wanted to go down and up close to the oldest building in the world. I knew what she was talking about. There, half revealed in the depths of the trench, stands the famous, “Tower of Jericho.” This massive stone edifice, which once loomed three storeys tall over the Jordan valley plains by the Dead Sea, was found intact under layers of history. By their estimates, this remarkable find is likely the oldest structure ever found, built thousands of years before Stonehenge, the advent of pottery, writing, and the wheel; around 8000 BC.

Continue Reading at Medium.com

I’ll See You Later tells the life altering stories of adoption, profoundly carried between families learning to embody love together. Open adoption stories, where the birth mom is a welcome part of the child’s life even as they are raised by their adoptive parents, are brave, courageous, and beautiful. This documentary film tells the real stories of adoption as shared by families who have lived it. For those who have an adoption story, this film resonates with a heart-aching richness and reflects the beauty of self-giving love; stories that reveal the very best in each of us. Some stories of adoption do not say “goodbye,” but, “I’ll see you later.”

This project, directed by Bruce McAllister and Jesse Nakano, and co-produced by Preston Pouteaux, tells Alberta stories of adoption and we’re happy to share these life altering stories. Learn more about this exciting film at illseeyoulater.com

It was in a time of revolution in China and war in Korea that Norman McLaren decided to create a short film about two neighbours. The film, called “Neighbours,” was produced by the National Film Board of Canada, and it was a quirky little story. Like many NFB films over the years, it experimented with a new kind of stop-motion film-making in full colour. In 1953 it even won an Academy Award and later an Oscar Award. The film, however, made waves for another reason - it tackled the hate that can grow between two neighbours and for that it was considered very controversial at the time.

The film offers a simple plot, and you can watch it online. Done in a unique stop-motion style, two neighbours sit pleasantly on their lawn chairs across from each other, smoking a pipe and reading the paper. Then, magically, a small flower grows between them. They take turns enjoying the flower, smelling it and admiring something so beautiful that found a home in their midst. Their pleasure turns to greed and envy and soon they are fighting over which side the flower might be on. Who did it belong to? They erect a fence, and fight over that. Soon the fence is broken apart and is turned into swords and the fight is on. The film ends with both neighbours laying dead, having killed each other, and a flower trampled underfoot. McLaren’s message is woven into the film: peace is certain if there is no war, and war is certain if there is no peace.

The film became the most popular film ever put out by the National Film Board of Canada and it went global, showing in tens of thousands of theatres around the world. It is a simple message of peace that begins, interestingly, in a peaceful suburban neighbourhood between two peaceful neighbours. It challenged the idea that war and hate begins in some far-off land between uncivilized people, as some thought in the 1950’s. Rather, peace begin to grow, or fails, between neighbours. The smallest difference, treated with cruel selfishness, can certainly descend into anger and dispute just as much in a suburban neighbourhood as it can anywhere in the world.

We might think that peace is inevitable in our community, that Chestermere and our own neighbourhoods will always have peace. But peace is not a de facto reality if it is not actively nurtured. Small things that divide us, if allowed to grow, will do its toxic work in us, and around us. We may want peace in the world, and we may advocate for the highest ideals, but if that does not translate into real love and peace between neighbours, then it remains merely a vague aspiration.

Real peace between real neighbours is something that we make and remake often. We find ways to give, even as someone is trying to take. We live generously, we forgive often, we may even lose something in the process of loving neighbours. A business may not serve us just as we like, or a driver may cut us off, but if our first reaction is to bark and bite on social media, the work of dismantling peace has begun.

Our work in 2021 may be to rebuilt what has been damaged between us, even if it comes at a cost. The work of peace is the work of being human, and we are most human when we find ourselves creating peace here and now. “Blessed are the peacemakers” is more than an adage for nice people, it is the doorway to Life.

Listen in on past conversations about faith, neighbourhoods, and beautiful things as we visit with podcasters about what is happening here in Chestermere.

Our journey into the neighbourhood is about those people over there and about you living right here. What if there was so much more happening between you, or rather, what if the possibility existed for nearly every good thing in your life to grow out of those people who live just over there? What if between you and them was the key to the Good Life, a fully human life, and a life found in God’s love for you? Your deep longing to be known and loved is met here, in the beautiful space between real neighbours. From the award winning author of The Bees of Rainbow Falls: Finding Faith, Imagination, and Delight in Your Neighbourhood comes a vibrant collection of essays that invite us to look closely at the space between neighbours. Preston Pouteaux warmly shows us how we can flourish with love, joy, and kindness as we step out and into our neighbourhood. The neighbours are real, and with this unfolds a surprising way of life and faith that is close to the heart God. Written for his neighbours, and printed over two million times in his weekly local newspaper column, Into the Neighbourhood, this inspiring collection points to the good and the beautiful growing nearby. Join Preston Pouteaux and his neighbours in Rainbow Falls as they continue their journey into the neighbourhood.

Get your copy on Amazon here.

Chestermere has grown, and so has our love for this little lakeside community. While in times past people affectionately called it “Chesterslough,” folks started to see our community as much more, as “Alberta’s Oasis.” We love our city and so we decided to give it the vintage travel poster treatment it never had. Download and print off these posters and share them around, and by doing so we look forward to the day when we travel more and lounge freely in closer proximity. But for now we wait and dream together. Stay safe and love your neighbour, it’s the best part of being in this community.

Download the higher resolution poster images here.

Coming Soon! The first book published by Plesion Studio. The Neighbours are Real and Other Beautiful Things is a collection of short essays by Preston Pouteaux.

Available Late 2020

Amidst Chestermere Soundscapes Vol. 1 is a creative collaboration between Louw Verwoerd and Preston Pouteaux. The goal was to capture the beautiful and often overlooked sounds of our community, the City of Chestermere in places and ways that might surprise us. Louw found three locations to set up his recording studio to capture the sounds of our city. Using three microphones he was able to gather audio to create an immersive experience. This is the first of our experimental project and we hope to gather more.

We wonder if by listening to our neighbourhood we will find ourselves drawn to listen to it again, and again. Who knows what, or who, we will begin to hear.

You can listen to this experimental album here.

By Preston Pouteaux

Winner of a 2017 Word Guild Award and Named an Essential Read by the Missio Alliance

What if we could imagine living in our neighbourhoods in a way that transformed our whole outlook on faith, hope, and love? Preston Pouteaux writes about how an unlikely journey into beekeeping changed how he saw his neighbours. The Bees of Rainbow Falls reminds us that we matter to our community, that goodness is found all around us, and that new life emerges out of the small and sublime. With the quirky curiosity of a beekeeper and the thoughtful care of a pastor, he gently welcomes readers to step into their own neighbourhoods. What if the very best gift was waiting for you just beyond your front door? Published in 2017 by Urban Loft Publishing.

Order on Amazon.ca

This article originally appeared in Faith Today

“I’m going down the street,” I said to my six-year-old girl as I slipped on my boots and went for the front door. We had been talking about our neighbours and wondering how they were getting on in the opening days of the COVID-19 virus as it hit our community. We had made up little encouragement cards for our neighbours with reminders of our contact numbers in case they needed anything.

I was off to slide them into the doors of a dozen neighbours, some who we see at our block parties and at the mailbox, some less so.

I remember as a boy – along with a scruffy group of other kids – all the ways we intruded on our neighbours. We could knock on a door and be warmly welcomed in, snacks would be shared, and we would recount all our epic adventures catching bugs and building forts. Neighbours were like aunties and uncles. They always seemed to have time for each other. To linger, laugh and gossip was the ordinary fare of teenagers on my street.

We were never too busy being busy and never too removed to be unknown.”

Continue reading here.

This article appeared originally here and here.

I have had a persistent nudge of curiosity that I simply cannot shake. Everytime I have breakfast with my neighbour Chris, or talk about gardening with Steve, or get together with our neighbours Colin and Kayla, I find myself astonished. These neighbours have become vital to my faith, and I don’t have a category for it, a frame of reference for why they mean so much to me. I feel like there is so much more happening between me and my neighbours than just a stream of niceties.

Christ-in-me is meeting Christ-in-them and it’s profound. God is so remarkably present in my neighbourhood, and the implications of that fill my imagination.

Here is what I’ve found: Love of neighbour has become a hobby for the church and Christians who worship together each Sunday. Hobbies are something we dabble in on the weekends or in retirement. We pull our hobby down from the shelf when we have time and energy to spare. Hobbyists may be more or less enthused about their craft, giving a moment of themselves to their passion so long as it fills the need it was created for. When real life leans in, or the hobby loses its lustre, they are boxed up and eventually sold in a garage sale.

…continue reading here.

We’re trying something and hoping it grows. Every neighbourhood is unique and special, and so is every person who lives there. Plesion Studio is a local maker community in Chestermere crafting language and experiences that invite us to love our neighbours. It seeks to live into the invitation of Jesus to love our real neighbour as ourselves - and that we were made to live in, with, and for our neighbourhood. It’s the sweet spot for good things to grow. Plesion is an ancient Greek word referring to those who are near: our neighbours. A studio is a place of creativity, learning, growth, and purpose. Plesion Studio is a project of Lake Ridge Community Church and is directed by Preston Pouteaux. Plesion Studio aspires to be whimsically serious about the urgent invitation to patiently love the real people in our neighbourhoods. We can create uniquely Canadian publications that will inspire us to find goodness in the lives of our neighbours. We seek to be neighbourists who create from lived experience, offer insightful resources, work at better partnerships, and host excellent studio sessions. Together we believe that the beautiful work of living into the second half of Jesus’ command will renew our own faith and community in Chestermere, the church in Canada, and neighbourhoods everywhere. In all, we want to be the quirky neighbours who make this way of life so compelling that we wonder why we didn't live this way before.